Safe Speed Forums

On my motor insurence policy, like many others, there's a clause that states:

"The policyholder may also drive another vehicle not belonging to him."

Now, I understand this to mean that I am authorised to drive another vehicle on a temporary basis irrespective of any other insurance. But some insurance companies have been suggesting on the telephone that another vehicle may only be driven if it is also otherwise insured.

So suppose (and this really is 100% hypothetical) a friend wishes to purchase a car and asks me to drive it home for him on my insurance. The hypothetical vehicle has no other insurance. I believe that I am fully entitled and properly insured to drive it. I fully expect my insurance company to downgrade the cover to third party risks.

Who's right about this?

What happens if I park the vehicle on the road on route?

What happens if I park the vehicle and the handbrake fails several hours later and it rolls away and does damage?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

The driving other cars extension only covers you for third party risks on a vehicle that belongs to someone else and that already has insurance cover on it. It would not cover you to drive a friend's newly bought car if they had not already bought insurance. The caveat about pre-existing insurance has only been added in recent years as it was found that it was a great way for the young and dangerous to drive all sorts of high risk vehicles with a doc extension from something cheaper. They could just register the car in the name of a friend/relative and therefore insure it cheaply. I am not sure whether this was a good or a bad idea as now they just drive completely uninsured rather than third party.

I think it only covers you while driving it so if you park it and something happens it isn't covered for any risks. I assume if it did roll into another vehicle the registered keeper would get sued for damages but could sue the supplying garage saying their car wasn't of satisfactory quality and had a dangerous fault and they were holding them liable for the damage the car caused assuming the handbrake was defective rather than it just wasn't put on properly. Might be best to park it on the flat with chocks on the wheels

TeaBelly is pretty much spot on. Yes you could drive the vehicle home legally, but you wouldn't be able to park it up anywhere, as the second you leave it, it's uninsured!

In theory, if you picked it up from private property (the garage), then drove it back to his house and parked it on private property (his drive), and you never left the vehicle inbetween those two events, you should (as I've said; theoretically) be fine.

_________________
Carl Prescott

You don't need insurance not to drive a car. If a car is parked, you are not driving it, so you don't need insurance.

_________________
I stole this .sig

IANAL, but I think it depends on the contract you make with the insurance company. If they specify that the policyholder may also drive another vehicle not belonging to him, with no other conditions, then that is part of the contract and they are legally bound to it.

On the other hand, if they add a condition that the vehicle must be otherwise insured, you have to honour that. They cannot add a condition after the original contract was made unless both parties agree, so if it is not in the original specification, and they merely tell you over the phone, that does not stand. If they tell you over the phone before the contract is made, then you are stuck with it.

_________________
I stole this .sig

If the car is parked on a public highway you do still legally need insurance.

A car can still incur a third party liability when parked. It might be parked in a dangerous manner that leads to another innocent party colliding with it resulting in a claim. Or as Paul says, it might roll away and hurt someone or do some damage.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Exactly, hence it being fine as long as you drive from private property to private property without leaving it any time inbetween.

_________________
Carl Prescott

Policies are generally 12 months, so that's the duration of the contract. Come renewal time, surely they can change what they like since it's a new contract. As for having to explain all the Ts and Cs over the phone, that's never happened to me. I've had to wait until the schedule arrives in the post, though I've never found anything in there that's made me cancel it and go elsewhere. (Household insurance is another matter ).

Going back to SafeSpeed's OP, I'm sure I saw Traffic Cops recently (or another show along the same lines) where someone got nicked for no insurance. It wasn't exactly the same, but the situation was similar. The guy had been to the auctions and bought a car, ironically an ex-police car, and was driving it home on his "any vehicle" clause (at least, I'm sure he said that he'd got insurance for another vehicle). But the copper who stopped him said that as no-one had insured the particular car he was driving the "any vehicle" clause wasn't valid and there was effectively no 3rd party cover, so the car was seized. The driver probably didn't help himself by trying to bullshit his way out of it .
So it seems that an "any vehicle" policy can apply only to vehicles that are already insured, unless my recall of what I saw on the TV is faulty. Anybody else remember seeing the programme?

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I saw that programme. My recollection was that the guy had slipped up by putting the vehicle in his name. He seemed to twig this straight away, hence his trying to bull his way out of it by saying it was his employer's / girlfriend's etc etc.

The interesting bit here was that the Police impounded the vehicle so he couldn't drive any further until he could produce a valid certificate of insurance. I couldn't see how that could be, surely if he had simply said "I have insurance, but it's at home" then he'd have been sent on his way with a 7 day producer?

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

IANAL, and I agree that liabilities might arise with a car that is parked on a public road, and that one should carry insurance for that situation, but it does not appear to be a requirement according to the law. The highway code is vague on this (nothing new there), but the Road Traffic Act section 143 is more clear, saying that a person must not use a motor vehicle on a road unless there is in force ... a policy of insurance ... in respect of third party risks . It is left for the judge to say whether using a vehicle means driving it, and not using it means not driving it. For instance, if I sit and smoke in my parked car and put the ash in the ash tray, I am using the car as an ashtray and may need insurance. But if I am on holiday in Canada and the car is parked outside my house, that’s a different matter although you could say that even then I may be using the car to keep the road dry, but this would not stand in my opinion because it would make a laughing stock out of the law.

Unless there is case history, it is reasonable to assume that using a car means driving it, and parking it means you are not using it. Do you have information that contradicts this, JT?

_________________
I stole this .sig

Yes, but they have to express the changes to you - it's not good enough unless both parties agree to sign up to the same conditions, and my insurance polices have never had this caveat attached unless its buried somewhere in the small print. Has anyone waded through the whole thing? Does any policy contain a condition in black and white saying that an additional policy is required to cover me to drive someone else's car.



I assume his insurance policy covered the following conditions
1) cars belonging to other people and
2) a specific car that belonged to him.

When he was stopped, the car belonged to him, to the first condition was not filled. Also, as it was not the specific car, the second condition was not filled and he had no insurance.

_________________
I stole this .sig

According to the Road Traffic Act, you only need insurance to use a vehicle. I reckon that any judge who ruled that not using a vehicle (i.e. parking it) constitutes "using it" would be confined to a care home. So you are probably not legally obliged to insure a car that is parked. If you are liable for something while it is parked, and you have no insurance, you'd have to pay out of your own pocket, I'm afraid.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Well it has to be taxed by law to be on the road. Since you can't tax it without insurance, and since the tax isn't valid without insurance even if you did have a policy in effect at the time of buying the disc, I'd say that it has to be in some way insured to be on the public road.

_________________
Carl Prescott

What is interesting to me is this. I have a standard policy that allows me to drive anybody else's car but mine, and additionally allows me to drive one specific car belonging to me. I could have picked up his car from the pound for him, according to my policy.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Where did you learn that tax isn't valid without insurance? Once the tax is paid, the government has the money any nobody can change that. To make it invalid, they'd have to refund it.

It is the car that is taxed, but it is the driver who is insured. This is anomalous, because it allows an ‘official keeper’ to tax a car without having a policy. The post office needs to see a valid insurance certificate and an MOT. Anybody with one of 'drive anybody else's cars' policies can tax a car on somebody else's behalf. I have done this, although this was a long time ago and there may be a procedure in place now. It would be possible to achieve the same thing by buying a one day policy just to get the tax disk. As far as I know, the official keeper does not need a license for the car, nor insurance (nor even tax if he keeps the car off the road).

It is the driver's lookout if the car has no insurance or tax, although the keeper may also required to take reasonable steps to ensure the car is not driven illegally.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Ah, fair enough! I stand corrected.

_________________
Carl Prescott

Not sure he'd have got round it that way either. There's a database of insured vehicles, so all the copper needs to do is radio in and ask someone to check the database, "Not Insured" pops up on the computer screen and the driver is back to square one. I'm assuming that it's a complete database, but I know there's a bit in my insurance policy about the police being able to serch it to find out if a car/driver is properly covered.

I'm not sure I follow you. If something has changed when you renew they do express the changes to you, but not in advance (like over the phone) or it'd take all day to buy insurance. You find out what changes they've made, if any, when your docs come through and you go through the schedule. If you find something you don't like, you cancel the insurance. In practice, I expect significant changes are probably rare and conditions are pretty standard on all policies. Certainly I've seen the same "we won't cough up if this happens" reasons on all the policies I've ever had. Radioactive contamination and damage from supersonic aircraft have always made me smile, and they're still saying they won't pay for Milennium Bug problems.
And what does IANAL mean? That's got me scratching my head.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Aha. Found out why that bloke on tv got done, assuming this condition is typical. From the FAQs on my insurers website (my bold):In other words, he was trying to pull a fast one by having multiple cars and only insuring one of them. Obviously that breaks the spirit of the law, and since he got nicked he must have broken be the letter of the law somewhere too.
While it says that the "any driver" clause is for emergencies, what isn't said is whether or not the borrowed vehicle must have been insured by its owner. I feel this is implied, but it doesn't say so in black and white.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

It is the driver who is insured, not the car. Any person with a policy that insures him or her to drive the car could do so. The car does not have to be named in the policy - it could be ( and often is) specified by a global condition such as 'any car' or 'any car not belonging to him or her' and such like. That is the type of policy garages use to allow them to drive customer cars to and fro. Any such database would therefore be at best a partial solution.



I AM NOT A LAWYER. And I don't mean to shout. What I am saying is that my policy does not say that the 'any body else's vehicle' has to be insured, not does the law. No vehicle has insurance -drivers have insurance to drive certain vehicles. Indeed, (and IANAL) a vehicle can stand outside my house without me having a policy for a year and that is lawful - my brother or sister or neighbour or gardner might or might not have a policy to drive, and maybe nobody has a policy, it makes no odds. A driver only needs a policy to use (i.e. drive) the car. If an insurance company claims that it's policy allows me to drive other people's cars, then they are bound to that agreement. If they have a condition that owner/official keeper/main user/anybodyelser of the other car must have a policy also, then that would have to be clearly a part of the contract. I'd need a microscope to read my contract, but it certainly has never been made clear that this is a condition. If anybody knows of any insurance company that is saying this, then that would be breach of contract or deceit, which are both serious, and should be reported to the insurance company's ombudsman.

_________________
I stole this .sig

I know we cover drivers rather than cars, that's why I said "car/driver". I agree that the database isn't perfect. It's an assumption on my part, but I think the database must distinguish between drivers who are covered by "any vehicle" clauses and those who aren't. At least I hope it does. If it was just which cars had been insured (you know what I mean ) the database wouldn't be worth much. My insurance company says it doesn't put "any driver" clauses on all policies (think it's always there for customers over 25 or something, but otherwise you're stuck with the vehicle on the policy). If I was stopped in a different car the police would have to know if my policy lets me drive it.

Nor does mine. Don't know about the law, IANAL either (thanks for the definition).
I'm thinking about what you were saying about insurance for parked cars and defintions of use on public roads. Sure, in reality a parked car isn't being used in the way that we'd normally interpret the word. But I'm wondering if even being parked and unoccupied is still classed as "use". After all, it's occupying space on the road, so it could be argued that by taking up 50 or so square foot of tarmac constitutes usage (of the road rather than the car). It's just that I've always had the impression that an uninsured car on the driveway is okay, but parked on the road is a no-no. Perhaps this is for situations like SafeSpeed's hypothetical handbrake failure, though you'd have to wonder how they'd sort it out if an uninsured car kept on a sloped driveway had a brake failure and rolled out onto the road. Ahhh brain hurts. Stuff it, I think I'll carry on leaving it in gear when I park on a hill.

I think we really need to ask InGear about all this.

Edit: Traffic Cops again this evening. Bloke with clapped out old uninsured car parked on the road had it towed (and eventually crushed - probably cheaper to get another clapped out old banger than insure the one the police dragge away ). Bloke gave copper the "bought it this morning" one, like that was going to work for more than a nanosecond. But one of Bloke's mates/neighbours asked why the copper didn't just make him leave it on the driveway (erm, so he doesn't drive it again half an hour after copper has gone maybe? Besides, didn't see any driveways.). Still, it does seem strange that we have a system where car that isn't covered by insurance can be towed if parked on the road, but the same car is okay on a driveway. Not exactly the point of this thread, I know, but still curious.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein